


Atlas

by romanticalgirl



Series: At the Edge of the World [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 08:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10635642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: Post CA:CW - Bucky gets woken up and finds out what Steve's been up to while he was out.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [maurheti](http://archiveofourown.org/users/maurheti/pseuds/maurheti) for the beta. All mistakes are my own

Waking up is nothing like he expected it to be. Not that he’d actually expected it. He assumed that he’d be frozen forever, whatever Hydra had put in his head eating away at him from the inside out. Instead he wakes up in a quiet room painted a soothing green. He’s in an actual bed and there’s the sound of running water nearby. If he dreamt while he was in stasis, he might think it was a dream.

“Hello, Mr. Barnes.”

Bucky turns his head to see T’Challa standing in the doorway. He’s dressed casually, and it’s strange to remember everything upon waking. “Hi.” He tries to sit up, but the world tilts sideways when he realizes he only has one arm to support himself with. He crashes to the bed and grunts. “Shit.”

“Indeed.” T’Challa comes into the room the rest of the way and takes a seat near the bed. “This is your second waking—actual waking. There have been other times when we’ve kept you sedated but freed you from the chamber to see if the steps we had taken had worked. The seventh time, apparently, was a charm.”

“You said second.”

“Yes. You initially woke up in the medical station. You… reacted as one would expect. They sedated you again enough to ask you the questions and then gave you a larger dose to help you sleep off the rest of the effects. It’s a narcotic they’ve been developing for Captain Rogers, and it seems to have worked. We thought perhaps it would provide some relief for you as well.”

“Steve. Where is he?”

“Ms. Romanov will be by shortly. Would you like anything to eat or drink?”

“Where is Steve?”

T’Challa tilts his head in acknowledgment, but doesn’t say anything else. Anger boils in the pit of his stomach, waging war against the acid fear that the evasion is giving him. He tries to get to his feet, but even sitting on the edge of the bed makes him want to throw up and then lie down forever. He’s not sure he could get to the end of the bed, much less the door.

“Morning, sleepyhead.” Natasha comes into the room and unceremoniously pushes him back so he’s lying down again. “Don’t be an idiot and try to jump into anything recklessly. I already have one of those.”

“Where is he?”

“Tony?”

He flexes his flesh hand and has never wanted the metal one more. He doubts he could handle the weight of it, but it shouldn’t take much to lift it and pinch it tight enough to cut off an airway. “Where. Is. Steve?”

He hisses the words, his eyes narrowed and dangerous. He may not have the words in his head -- _he doesn’t have the words in his head_ \-- but the Winter Soldier is still there. As much as he’s Bucky, as much as he’s James Buchanan Barnes, as much as he’s anything, he’s the Winter Soldier in equal proportions.

“Relax. He’s off on a mission.”

“Is it dangerous.”

“Is it _Steve_?”

Bucky exhales and stares at her, eyes still slitted. “You’re lying.” He doesn’t give her time to speak. “You’re lying. They wouldn’t have woken me up without him here.”

“They’ve woken you up without him here before.”

“Not like this. They were sure. They were _sure_ this time.” He knows with a surety somewhere in his gut with the anger and the fear, though he’s not sure how there’s room given that his fear is growing exponentially. He’s sure that’s what beats whatever horse pill they’ve given him and lets him launch himself off the bed with his good hand—his only hand—and run down the hallway.

He stops dead in the med-bay before he can even grab someone and demand answers.

There are two cryo-chambers.

Two.

“Oh.” The air is cut off from his lungs and he sits down hard on the floor. One is empty and dry, the other is closed and cold and _Steve_. “Wha--” He can’t continue, can’t think of anything except what horrific, horrible thing could have happened to Steve that he’d be there, caught in the ice, frozen again. “H-how? Hy-hydra? Is he okay?” He’s not sure how he gets to his feet, but he charges toward T’Challa, only to find himself picked off the floor by one of his bodyguards. He struggles, but she clearly has no intention of letting him go. He reaches out, fingers curled like claws. “ _What happened_?”

“Bucky.” Natasha’s voice is soft, but it echoes loudly in the wake of his scream. “He’s okay. A complete and utter idiot, but okay.”

“He’s not okay. He’s in fucking _stasis_.” He’s still yelling, and it’s the fear choking him along with the grip T’Challa’s bodyguard has on his shirt, digging it into his throat. He swings his legs and wraps them around the guard, using his larger size to drop her to the floor. He reaches across to his left and grabs her arm, twisting it and pinning it to the floor. Danger radiates off of her, and he knows he’ll be dead the second he moves. “Please.”

T’Challa says something in his native language and the guard relaxes. Her eyes are locked on Bucky as he gets to his feet, and he knows she’d just as soon kill him, but whatever he’d said, T’Challa had saved Bucky’s life again.

“Please, Mr. Barnes. Sit.”

Bucky backs toward the low bench near the wall, sinking down, unable to look away from Steve. His head is thrown back slightly and, for a moment, Bucky can imagine him stepping out of the Vita-Ray machine, unsure and uncertain in his new body. “Why?”

“Well, like I said. He’s an idiot.” Natasha says the words softly, affection thick in her voice. Whatever had happened, Natasha had fought Steve on this. He’s sure of that. “He’d given up the shield. He’d told Tony that he would help if he was needed, but with everything between them, the odds of Tony calling Steve in unless he’s desperately needed—we’re talking another Chitauri or Ultron situation—are, _were_ , slim to none.”

Bucky can’t look away from the long eyelashes fanned over Steve’s pale cheeks. He’s clean-shaven and dressed in an outfit nearly identical to the one Bucky had worn into the chamber. “So he got his feelings hurt and locked himself in there?”

“Do you know what you do when you’re sad and depressed and hurting and you have an accelerated healing power, when your body kicks out drugs and alcohol before you can feel anything?” Bucky doesn’t move, as frozen as he’d been hours before. Natasha keeps going, and he feels like every word makes him bleed. “When you feel out of place and wrong in the world and you’re so goddamned lonely?”

“No.” The word feels as dry as desert air in his throat.

“You fight like you’ve got nothing left to lose. You throw yourself into situations like you’re a suicide bomber, put yourself on the line to save everyone else, because at least then it’s for a reason, right?”

Bucky slumps back against the wall. He wants to look at Natasha and see that she’s not saying what he thinks she is. What he knows she is.

“Tony had to call him in, give him back the shield. It was like Vision said once. Accelerated humans brings accelerated threats. So there was another attack, and we were in the middle of a battle. Steve charged right at one of the creatures, I still don’t know what exactly they were, and it went right at Steve. It felt like the whole world shook when they hit. When it hit Steve. Hard.” She sighs and he sees her move out of the corner of his eye, staring down at her hands between her knees. “Steve flew a couple hundred feet. Slammed into a building. Landed badly. Broke his back. He was in the hospital for nearly six months.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“We visited as often as we could. Things were better, wounds healed between him and Tony while Steve healed. Tony, being Tony, threw a party when he got out. Sort of a welcome home party. He came and it seemed good, like it was before which, to be honest, probably wasn’t all that good. But then the next morning he was gone. I followed him to Brooklyn.”

Bucky bites his lip to keep from choking, from losing control.

“He asked me if I thought the shield would take off his head if he didn’t catch it. If he just let it come back. Just stood there. Said no one ever aimed for his head and that’s all they ever had to do.”

He does choke then, practically gagging. “That stupid son of a bitch.”

“I brought him here. I thought that maybe being back with you after so long…”

“But it made it worse.” It’s not a question. He can see it in everyone’s expressions, and suddenly his stomach is hollow and empty. “I made it worse.”

“He said he didn’t want to be alone in the world anymore, and T’Challa could do this for him, or he could shoot himself in the head. Those were his only two choices.” She laughs softly, sadly, her voice wrecked. “He felt guilty because he knew you’d feel guilty. You’d think you’re supposed to be angry with yourself for going back in the ice in the first place. He said it wasn’t you. It was him. He wasn’t meant to ever come out of the ice. Some things are better left buried.”

He can practically hear Steve’s voice. Can hear the empty, hollow tone that he would get back in the 20s and 30s when he was sick, when they were all scared, sure he was going to die. Steve would fight everything, but he knew he’d only win so many battles with Death before he lost the war.

“When do we defrost him? Why haven’t they defrosted him?”

“It was our choice, Bucky. Mine and T’Challa’s. To put him in there. And he only gave it to us because he thought he owed both of us. It wasn’t his.”

“That stupid fucking _asshole_.” Bucky’s chest heaves and emotions that had been bottled up flood his head and his throat, and he hunches in on himself. He _hurts_ , oh God, he hurts. “What about me? All that work and effort to find me and he was just going to leave? Without…”

“I know that it’s…”

“Why didn’t any of you _do_ anything? Help him?” He knows Steve wouldn’t accept the help, but the outlet of his rage is currently behind glass. “You were just going to let him _die_.”

Natasha sucks in a sharp sound, and Bucky knows he’s gone too far. Knows that, whatever else is true, Natasha loves Steve and Bucky’s words were sharper than any knife he’s ever used. “You ever known anyone to stop Steve Rogers from doing something he was determined to do?” That shuts Bucky up, but Natasha doesn’t stop. “I got him in that freezer, Barnes, because it was a hell of a lot better than finding him bleeding out at your grave.”

“My what?” Bucky’s head snaps up, his gaze on her instead of Steve. Fucking Steve.

“Your parents buried an empty coffin for you. You know how many times we found him there? You’re lucky none of us was ever too late.”

Bucky gets up, unwilling to look at her any longer. He walks toward the cryo-chamber and presses his fingers to it. Steve doesn’t look at peace. He looks like he took the weight of the world that was sitting on his shoulders in with him and it’s bearing down on him, slowly but surely getting to be too much for his broad shoulders. Bucky traces the curve of one of them through the reinforced glass. Steve had carried the same weight even before the serum. Broader shoulders should have made it all easier.

“Did he say anything about me?”

“Every word he said was about you, Barnes.”

“Not… About me coming out of stasis. Did he say anything about that? What to do then?”

“He wished to be woken first.” T’Challa says it softly, and Bucky starts, having forgotten he was in the room. “He asked that, when we were to wake you the final time, to bring him out first.”

“But you didn’t. You didn’t respect his wishes. You didn’t stick to your promise.” Bucky knows Steve made them promise. And he knows what promises mean to Steve. And this is another broken one to heap on and see if it’s the one that breaks his back. “Why?”

“Because he wouldn’t have told you.” Natasha speaks again, and Bucky knows who helped T’Challa make the decision. Who _made_ the decision. “We know the things the Winter Soldier did, and Steve can be there for you while you heal from that, learn to be whoever you are when you’re not the Asset. But you can’t be there for him if you don’t know that he needs you. How he needs you.”

Bucky moves his hand back over the curve of Steve’s shoulder to his neck. “And if learning to be me is too much, you don’t want to wake him up.”

“I don’t want to see him hurt like that ever again.” Natasha comes over to him, slowly and loud enough that he can hear her, even if he can’t see her. She leans on the side of the tank. “I don’t want to wake up one day to a world that doesn’t have him in it. He’s an idiot, and an asshole, and the best damn person I’ve ever know. It’s not because he’s Captain America. It’s because he’s Steve, and I _need_ Steve to be here, to be somewhere.” Her voice breaks slightly, and Bucky’s gaze darts over to her.

She’s in his memories—the same but different—and he knows that vulnerability was scraped out of them long ago. Emotion. Weakness. His fingers move up Steve’s neck to his jaw. “I was fourteen.”

“What?”

“When I realized what was wrong with me. No. It wasn’t wrong. Not that I loved him. How I loved him. Everyone should love him. Admire and respect and love him. But I…”

“He loves you too.”

“They told me he was dead. Red Skull had killed him. The Nazis. Hydra. They’d won. I couldn’t believe them, but...“ His thumb brushes the glass over Steve’s lower lip. “What choice did I have?”

“You didn’t have any choice. That’s sort of the whole point.” She glances up at Steve and then at Bucky. “I can tell you that if he’d survived the war -- come home and lived a life -- how he feels about you wouldn’t be any different than how it is right now after seventy years in the ice. Since he saw you on that bridge, you’re all that’s been on his mind. He loves you. He’s in love with you. And he’s scared.” She looks back at Steve, and Bucky knows she’s watching his fingers trace the curve of Steve’s cheekbone. “Scared you won’t love him back. Scared that he can’t fix everything. Scared of never being enough.”

“Yeah, well, he’s a punk.”

“Tony would say self-righteous ass, but I think Tony doesn’t get that Steve’s just righteous. Ass probably isn’t completely wrong.”

“Tony’s as much of a jackass as his father was.”

“Well, I never knew Howard Stark, but I’m not going to argue with a real historian.” She reaches up and puts her hand on top of his, finger against his as he follows Steve’s brow. “What do you want, James?”

“The last seventy years of my life back.”

She crooks an eyebrow at him, but doesn’t say anything. Her hand on top of his drags his down until it’s resting just over Steve’s heart. “What do you want, James?”

The word is heavy on his tongue, but strong enough that maybe it’s enough to shift the weight from Steve’s shoulders just a little. “Him.”

Natasha nods, wraps her hand loosely around his wrist and pulls him away from the cryo-chamber, back to the low bench. She nods at T’Challa and with that, a team of scientists come in and start working on the computers, toying with screens and buttons on the chamber itself. Bucky’s never seen the process from this side, never been awake to hear the hiss and sigh as the gas inside the tank changes, as Steve’s breathing changes ever so slightly. The door slides open with a sound out of one of the old science fiction books he used to read and Bucky moves before thinking, reaching Steve even before the nearest scientist, catching Steve before he falls.

**Author's Note:**

>  _The weight of the world is on your shoulders / You've seen so much and you're so young / But you'll have to wait until you're older / To understand all that's been done / Stand your ground because the battle has / Just begun_ \- "At Least for Now", The Posies


End file.
